TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
London's Canary Wharf pioneers seamless Wi-Fi roaming
Change Size
Quiet escalators are seen during morning rush hour at Canary Wharf underground station, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in London, Britain, on June 1, 2020. (REUTERS/Toby Melville)
R
esidents and workers in London's Canary Wharf will be able to experience superfast Wi-Fi broadband across the site without the hassle of logging into different networks thanks to the first European commercial roll-out of OpenRoaming technology.
A joint initiative by Canary Wharf Group, broadband provider Virgin Media and technology company Cisco will allow devices to connect securely and automatically to next generation Wi-Fi 6 networks and roam seamlessly from one hotspot to another without the need log in, the companies said.
Cisco UK and Ireland chief executive David Meads said the technology could help businesses adapt after the COVID-19 pandemic, with workers unlikely to go back to being tethered to their enterprise network for eight hours a day, five days a week.
"Having the flexibility to access applications, wherever those applications sit in the cloud, without compromising security whilst on the move is a new dynamic that hadn't really been appreciated to the degree we do now," he said.
Deploying Wi-Fi 6 across Canary Wharf, London's second financial center that is home to many major banks, would take the strain off mobile networks, he said.
Read also: London named Europe's top 'tech for good' hotspot
"Where you have a dense population of people, whether it's residential or from the workplace, with Wi-Fi 6 you have greater capacity than traditional mobile radio networks, greater range, higher reliability and reduced latency," he said.
He said Wi-Fi 6 complemented rather than competed with 5G radio technology, with use cases for both.
OpenRoaming allows users to join any network that is part of a Wireless Broadband Alliance federation, including Samsung, Google, Virgin Media and many others.
It enables the network to securely authenticate user's devices by using credentials such as those provided by service providers or device manufacturers.
